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The beginning of Second Life

Second Life (SL) evolved as an idea by founder and former Linden Lab CEO, Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden). He envisioned a vast green, continuous landscape, distributed across multiple servers — and went on to build it. While he dreamed of virtual worlds since his childhood, in 1994, Rosedale first thought of connecting computers via the Internet and creating a virtual world. In 1999, he founded Linden Lab (LL). Andrew Linden stated that Linden Lab started as a hardware company geared towards the research and development of haptics. Although work was underway on a prototype called "The Rig, haptics were subsequently abandoned due to heavy patent concentration. The Linden Lab employees — commonly known as "Lindens" — needed a virtual world to go with their hardware, so in 2001 they started building "LindenWorld", as described in an early news story.

In this early state, LindenWorld wasn't open to the public, was very gun-focused (like a shooter game) and its avatars were made out of prims (called Primitars). This video shows how the world looked back then and how users could interact with it:[1]

LindenWorld was renamed into Second Life: a 3D virtual world with user generated content, where users could interact with each other in realtime.

"Originally, during the Alpha period, the grid was known as Lindenworld. As we were getting ready to launch the Beta, we decided we needed a name that would convey the expansiveness, involvement and complexity we hoped would characterize this world as it grew. We started by debating the merits of a 'place' name versus a 'descriptive' name. We believed a place name would give people a sense of destination, and possibly some added layer of meaning. And we thought a descriptive name would help people understand this new concept of a shared, 3D collaborative space.

"We had a lot of ideas for place names --- one of my favorites was Sansara, which was not only euphonic, but had an interesting meaning in the original Sanskrit, meaning roughly 'ever changing world'. Ultimately, though, we chose to go with a descriptive name, and looked at many derivatives of Terra, Viva, and life. We kept coming back to Life2, and then landed on Second Life as more interesting, more evocative and more what we hoped the world could become as it evolved and grew to be as big as life.

Second Life closed beta started in November 2002 and lasted until April 2003 when public beta started. Read more about History of SL Beta.

2003

While population and land slowly grew, Linden Lab released Second Life in June 2003. As shocking as it may seem in hindsight, back then, SL had neither a currency nor were Residents able to teleport. It was in the end of 2003 when the Linden Dollar was introduced, and the LindeX currency exchange followed about two years later.[3]

In order to restrict simulator resource usage, a tax system was introduced which required every Resident to pay a weekly fee, depending on the prims they had rezzed inworld. This system was easy to trick by packing all prims into the inventory on payment due day, then re-rezzing them again a day later.[4]

The first Telehubs were introduced in Version 1.1.0, with the feature of paying to teleport from one Telehub to another.

While in the beginning, Second Life's business model was primarily based on paid memberships (which later evolved into Premium and Basic accounts), the focus soon shifted to land sales. Residents became able to acquire and rent land, which in turn also became a business model for some entrepreneurial Residents.

2005

In March 2005 Second Life version 1.6 was rolled out bringing with it a number of features including QuickTime media streaming and a standard Second Life building interface.

In late 2005, Linden Lab removed most Telehubs on the grid, opening the way for "direct teleport" from one point to another. Previously, after teleporting, Residents had to fly from a Telehub to their specific destination. The Telehubs were mostly converted into Infohubs, meant to be community gathering spaces and "welcome areas" for new Residents.

2006

On May 1, Resident Anshe Chung was featured on the cover of the U.S. magazine BusinessWorld, reported to be the first person becoming a real-life millionaire due to Second Life business. This story brought great media coverage and pitched the population growth further.

On October 18 at precisely 8:05:45 PST, the 1,000,000th Resident joined Second Life. A special Linden Bear was created to celebrate this milestone.

On April 13, Linden Lab announced the eventual removal of the profile rating system[6], which was used for social reputation but also prone to being abused and misunderstood.

On May 21, the WindLight atmospheric rendering was announced[7] and became part of the main release in Viewer version 1.19.1 on April 2.[8] WindLight improved Second Life's graphics dramatically.

On August 2nd, Linden Lab released its new main viewer (V1.18.1-2) with in-world voice chat capabilities.

2008

On February 22, Blue Linden announced that there would be a new set of city-style themed regions named Bay City. Bay City opened for viewing on May 8, 2008, and on May 24, 2009, Bay City content was released to Residents as templates for their own creations.

Philip Rosedale announced his stepping down as CEO in mid-March[9], and introduced new CEO Mark D. Kingdon (M Linden) one month later.[10]. Philip continued to serve as Chairman on the Board of Directors.

Scripting performance enhancer Mono was launched in August, as part of the 1.24 Server deploy[12]

2009

On January 20, Linden Lab announced that it acquired the SL online marketplaces OnRez and XStreet SL (formerly SL Exchange) in order to merge and integrate them into a web shopping service for virtual goods that would become the Second Life Marketplace.[13]

In March, Linden Lab started a project to create Zindra, a new continent specifically designed for Adult content. Changes to Maturity ratings policies went live on September 15, and Zindra came online in October.

2011

On March 29th, Linden Lab introduced the Basic mode in Viewer 2 to improve new Resident experience in Second Life. The previous user interface is now the "Advanced mode".

On June 2nd, at 4pm PT Linden Lab performed a load test for Group Chat on the ADITI Beta grid. Many participants attended to test out group chat in Oatmeal and GC Test regions.

On July 26th, Linden Lab launched the new social web profiles.

On August 23rd, Mesh went gridwide and now all Second Life residents can benefit from the new Mesh technology.

2012

On February 16th, Linden Lab announced details about Pathfinding alpha and that pathfinding experiments were being conducted in Second Life. As of April 19th the Pathfinding Viewer tools are now in beta.

On April 16th, Linden Lab announced that Second Life’s 9th Birthday will now focus on the spotlight on community events around the grid.

On June 29th, Linden Lab announced Project Shiningto improve Avatar and Object Streaming Speeds in Second Life.

On 2nd July 2014, Linden Lab announced a limited beta test of an exciting new tool for creators called Experience Keys

2015

On 6th February 2015, Linden Lab hosted a snowball fight event with the Second Life community over at Winter Wonderland.

Teen Second Life

On February 13, 2005, Linden Lab offered "amnesty" for underaged Residents, in case they'd want to be beta testers for the new Teen Second Life (TSL) service. Before this time, Second Life was only open for Residents 18 years and older; being 17 or younger resulted in a ban. The Residents were transferred to TSL, also known as the "Teen Grid" (TG), which was exclusively for teens — with the exception of approved adults like school teachers — and no communication with the Main Grid (MG) was possible. The Teen Grid was only open during Linden-desginated staffing hours. Also, during the first few months of TG Beta, access was restricted to those that were given an invite by an existing Resident or Linden Lab. Teens counted down to 1000 Residents on December 21, 2005.

Teen Second Life (Teen Grid) was open from February 14, 2005 and closed on January 21, 2011.

During 2007, there was problems for teens registering outside of the US because of a server issue. After January 2009, this issue was fixed.

On June 25th, 2008, at 2 PM Pacific, Torley Linden came to do an hour-long special TSL Q&A session with Teen Residents at TG Multimedia Stage.

On July 3rd, 2008, M Linden came to the Teen Grid and hosted a TSL special speech about Second Life's 5th Birthday.

In early 2009, the TSL Mentors 2.0 program was shut down by Linden Lab.

As of 2009, TSL had around 50,000 registered accounts and over 200-300 concurrent online Residents. There were 203 Teen Grid regions; however only around 130 are open publicly to Teens.

For Second Life's 6th Birthday in 2009, SL6B Teen region was moved over to the Main Grid, and was attached to the SL6B regions. This year's SL6B theme was "The Future of Virtual Worlds".

As of 2010, the Teen Grid had 93 Mainland regions, 7 Resident-owned estates, and 97 educational/project estates. At any given time, there were around 2,000 teens who were active over the last 30 days. The usual TSL concurrency is about 350 Residents.

In February 2010, the TSL forums were integrated into the new Second Life Forums. Teens and Adults now shared forums.